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Searching for the stories behind the heritageFri, 02 Mar 2018 05:08:38 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngStones and Storieshttps://stones-and-stories.com
A Pocketful of Ryehttps://stones-and-stories.com/2017/02/01/a-pocketful-of-rye/
https://stones-and-stories.com/2017/02/01/a-pocketful-of-rye/#respondWed, 01 Feb 2017 15:46:04 +0000http://stones-and-stories.com/?p=605Read More]]>The sleepy hilltop town of Rye looks almost chokingly picturesque. Chocolate-box-charming, the cobbled streets, half-timbered cottages, elegant Georgian town houses, olde-worlde shops and Norman church are steeped in bucolic Englishness and sugar-coated nostalgia. Hard to imagine this land-locked paradise was once the bad boy of the southern realm; the 18th century smuggling capital of England. At its height pretty much the entire town was involved in some capacity or other. Even today many of the buildings have interconnecting attics and dozens of alleys and passageways so illicit goods (and humans) could slink between houses under the very nose of His Majesty’s bailiff, tasked with the nigh-on impossible job of trying to stop the ‘trade.’

From medieval times until silting clogged its harbour to marshland, Rye was a thriving port – so much so that in 1336 it was named an ‘Antient Town’, affiliated with Edward the Confessor’s Cinque Ports, a trading confederation originally intended as a defensive measure. It didn’t work; the French burned it down in 1377.

The rebuild included massive stone walls and heavily defended gates. The only entrance at high tide, Land Gate, still exists. The shoreline gradually receded, however, and by the 16th century thriving port had become wealthy merchant town, with fine civic buildings, pomp, ceremony – and a healthy disregard for customs and excise.

On a foggy November day, standing by the 13th century Ypres Tower looking down onto the marshes hundreds of feet below, you can really get a flavour for those times. Fog lingers over low, flat land; modern wind turbines poke out from the swirling mists like eerie sentinels. It’s easy to imagine jolly locals ferrying illicit cargoes via paths the King’s Men had no hope of following, but the romance of smuggled brandy and silks can overshadow the unpleasant truth. People got rich through this, and they preserved their power through whatever means necessary, whether bribery, intimidation or violence.

The Ypres Tower is now a museum where, among the more grisly artefacts can be seen the gibbet that held the corpse of John Breads. Breads plotted to kill the mayor, but accidentally stabled the dignitary’s brother-in-law, who’d borrowed his cloak for the evening. Breads was hanged then gibbeted as an example, but it did little to discourage the anarchy.

Centre of all illegal goings-on, the Mermaid Inn, (rebuilt in 1420; the cellars date back to 1156) was headquarters to the notorious Hawkhurst gang, so brazen they would leave their loaded pistols on the table as they drank. The inn is still a must-see, if not a must-stay, its roaring fires and ancient timbers welcome on a cold night. The fish stew is excellent. With an alleged revolving cupboard and a tunnel running between it and the nearby Old Bell pub, no magistrate dared interfere.

Cash continued to pour into Rye. Some of it was even lawfully acquired. Much of the gains, however gotten, were spent on beautifying the town. Climb to the top of St Mary’s church tower and enjoy the ornate roofs, fancy pilasters, wrought-iron curlicues and fine chimneys of Rye’s confidently wealthy. Below, fat, gilded cherubs known as “Quarter Boys” because they chime the quarter, not the hour, have been bonging their bells on the church clock since 1760.

These days it’s hard to believe Rye was so lawless. It’s as respectable as they come and a magnet to visitors and would-be residents alike. From late-17th Century Jeake’s House hotel to the old grammar school on the high street, built in 1636 and now a fascinating second hand record shop, virtually every building is worth a second glance. The funny little pipes sticking out of many frontages on the high street are flagpole holders. There’s nothing Rye likes more than a spot of pageantry, dating back to the time when the town hosted Queen Elizabeth I for three days.

Watch out for quirky house names – “The House with Two Front Doors,” “The House with the Seat,” “The House Opposite” – and curious artistic endeavours from carved planks to bizarre mosaics and interesting displays in people’s front-room windows. The odd-looking 18th century brick domes scattered around the town belong to an early piped water scheme, proof of just how well-off Rye’s inhabitants had become. The original stocks up near the Ypres Castle pub clinging to the hillside and overlooking the distant sea provide more evidence that Rye was not always the upstanding community it is now.

One building in particular, Lamb House (National Trust), has had a succession of famous residents. When George I was stranded during a storm in 1726, James Lamb invited him to his newly-built home. The king stayed three days, though he spoke no English and his hosts no German, and even though Lamb’s wife gave birth the first night. The child was named George of course, His Majesty the rather regal godfather.

In 1897 novelist Henry James moved in and stayed until his death in 1916. In the 1920s comic writer E F Benson lived there and wrote his famous Mapp and Lucia books, set in ‘Tilling,’ a barely-disguised Rye. Miss Mapp’s home Mallards is very obviously Lamb House, and recently found fame once more in a BBC TV adaptation. In much the same spirit as the books, the whole town must have got involved in the filming as several of the exteriors – and their attendant interiors – are clearly recognisable.

Rye is compact. The tiny Victorian railway station is just 40 minutes away from St Pancras and the whole town is easily walkable, if a little hilly, in a weekend. Before you make your way up to the town proper, do take a moment to look around what is left of old Rye Harbour and the strand (an archaic word for ‘beach’) where old, clapboarded warehouses now house antique and craft shops, tea rooms and restaurants.

From there, wend slowly up the hill, taking time to poke around, peeking down passageways and through creeper-clad gateways. Enjoy the jumble of styles and periods from Dutch-gables to Queen Anne hooded doorways, half-timbered Tudor gems to magnificent Georgian fanlights.

Unlike most modern British towns Rye has managed to maintain a relatively firm stand against chain stores; the majority of its shops remaining independent. Even the supermarket is a local, family-run business. An excellent cook store boasts pottery you won’t find elsewhere and a musty basement full of unique basket ware. Bow-fronted bakeries tempt with iced cakes and fruity buns. Rows of lead soldiers march across the bull’s-eye window of an antique model shop. A fabulous stationery store in the high street appears not to have changed at all since the 1950s, with a fascinating jumble of magazines, general goods, fancy wares and, upstairs, an old-fashioned toy department.

Don’t miss what is, perhaps, the best hot chocolate shop in Britain. Knoops is up by the Land Gate, creating Heaven to order. Choose your percentage of cocoa, from entry-level 34% all the way through a terrifying 99%, and any extras, from marshmallow and cream to chilli and salt, then swoon as a sublime beverage is ground, swirled and crafted before your very eyes. If you have enough room for lunch after that, Edith’s in the high street is a fine, old fashioned café complete with armchairs, chintz, wind-up gramophone and excellent home-made food.

An old, reformed rogue who still carries a twinkle in his eye, Rye is genteel enough to be a charming slice of Olde Englande, yet naughty enough to retain that slightly dangerous edge. It’s worth lingering to savour the town’s many layers, however they were acquired.

This article by Sandra Lawrence originally appeared in British Heritage Travel. If you would like to syndicate it or commission Sandra to write something similar please do get in touch!

On a ridge of rolling hills deep in the Northamptonshire countryside sits a strange spinney (small cluster of trees). Too round to be natural, too wild to be tended, it crowns the fields of oilseed rape, of waving wheat and black-faced sheep.

A footpath leads down from Butchers Lane, in the bucolic village Boughton, long beyond vehicular access, over a boiling brook, past the stiles of a footpath crossroads before, on the left, another stile. Climb over, minding the mud, then follow the hedge along to the corner, then up, towards the curious spinney at the top.

A five-bar gate, behind which the little copse sits on the remains of a ha ha. This must once have been an eye-catcher visible for miles. Now tree-roots work their way through dry-stone walls, shrouding the mysteries within.

Behind the gate runs a small path worn by the (few) visitors to this quiet spot. Follow it inside. This wood cannot be more than fifty yards across but there’s still a shiver as an odd little stone shelter comes into view. Covered in wildflowers – marsh marigolds, primroses, nettle-bloom, it’s a simple, half-hemisphere with a jagged, open front. The walls inside are also jagged: local limestone, rough-hewn, but still good after nearly 250 years.

Running from it is a little stream; the hood of the grotto is a well-head for a natural spring.

Of all William Wentworh, second Earl of Stratford’s many follies from the mid 1770s, this has to be the most magical, not least because it’s so hidden. The Boughton follies aren’t exactly on the ‘most-famous’ list to start with – though the Spectacles, Hawking Tower (which looks suspiciously like a church tower) obelisk and sundry castellated farm buildings are splendid examples of the oeuvre.

In the 1770s, on inheriting Boughton Hall, William Wentworth reworked his father’s early 18th Century pleasure gardens around the estate in the Landscape style of Capability Brown; a smaller version of the overblown Stowe a few miles down the road.

A great friend of Horace Walpole (of Strawberry Hill fame), Wentworth also had a place overlooking Eel Pie Island, not far from Strawberry Hill,. Like most young aristocratic men of the time, he’d been on the Grand Tour and wanted to recreate beauty at Boughton, both classical and, bang up to date, gothic. It sounds as though he did it pretty impressively – Walpole, not a man to dole out compliments on a regular basis, said ‘Nobody has better taste than this lord.’

Wentworth died without issue, so Boughton passed to his sister, Lady Lucy Wentworth. The estate stayed (sort of) in the family until the 1920s when it was broken up, but it was never again as splendid as it was during William’s watch.

The grand house was pretty much levelled in 1808, and it’s hard to see the present, Victorian house without an invitation, but the follies can be accessed if you’re prepared to trudge a little.

As a landscape garden, there are quite a few spinneys, often including unusual trees, designed for viewing from afar. Some are 19th Century additions, and some 18th century buildings have been lost – I’d have paid money to see ‘the temple’, now missing, apparently the victim of an internment camp plonked on the site during WWII. I guess they had other things on their minds, but it was probably on its very last legs anyway, given it was constructed of linen on lathe so it could be moved around.

Grotto Spinney is a survivor. I’ve read it’s supposed to be an ancient Pagan site, but I can’t find any evidence of it, save that all springs seem to have been sacred in ancient times.

I can’t find an online map to find this strange little place; but the OS co-ordinates are:

If you don’t have a map, drive to Boughton Village, park somewhere sensible, and walk down Butchers’ Lane as far as it goes. It will turn to dirt track, then footpath. Cross the stream, but DON’T climb the first stile (I did, it was a very muddy track with no legal way of getting into the right field…) instead climb the second stile on the left, by the gate that is chained. Walk along the field to the end, then climb the hill to the spinney; the five-bar-gate is at the end of the field.

]]>https://stones-and-stories.com/2016/05/03/grotto-spinney/feed/0gatelawrencesingerSpinneyBoughtonstilehahaGrotto 2spring head 2spring headGrotto 2spinney 2grotto 5Hudson’s Heritage Inspirationhttps://stones-and-stories.com/2016/03/02/hudsons-heritage-inspiration/
https://stones-and-stories.com/2016/03/02/hudsons-heritage-inspiration/#respondWed, 02 Mar 2016 13:51:02 +0000http://stones-and-stories.com/?p=414Read More]]>Hudson’s is one of the best-known directories of interesting heritage things to visit; it’s hardly surprising that winning one of their coveted Heritage Awards is a big deal. The ceremony, held at Goldsmith’s Hall in the City, is always a glittering affair. Yesterday’s was enlivened by the always delightfully rambling Dan Cruikshank, whose focus on world heritage lost through war added a sober note.

The full list of winners is long indeed, and I’m sure will be fully covered elsewhere. Instead, in this post, I thought I’d talk about five places I have been inspired to visit this year after hearing more about them at the ceremony yesterday…

Chiddingstone Castle was Highly Commended in the Best Wedding Venue category. I’m not planning any nuptials just now, but the place itself intrigues me. Often overshadowed by its more famous neighbours, Hever and Penshurst, Chiddinsgtone’s Tudor core has been remodelled into a neo-gothic fantasy, with rose-filled grounds and seriously curious collections of Egyptian, Japanese, Buddhist and Jacobean art.

How come I’ve lived in London all my life and never visited Keats’s House? Another Highly Commended, this delightful-looking cottage remains hidden not least because, apparently, the council refuses to put up any signs as to where this Georgian jewel actually is. I’ll be getting out at Hampstead Tube soon, trusting to a sturdy OS map and compass and seeking out a little romance.

I have actually seen the winner in this category, and I have to put my hands up – Painshill 18th Century landscape garden’s crystal grotto is a worthy choice. Once almost totally ruined, this magnificent folly has been restored in the most spectacular fashion, glittering, sparkling and twinkling with gems and waterfalls. I’m definitely visiting again this year.

Dunham Massey’s extraordinary World War One event last year, for which it won ‘Best Event’, is now over but the place is now on my radar, after having only ever heard of it peripherally before. I love the look of the place, remodelled in the 18th Century, though I can never find my way round the National Trust’s website to drill down to exactly what a property is – I always have to go elsewhere for basic information, which can be frustrating. No matter, I’ll be going to find out for myself this year…

I’m never sure what I feel about Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. I admire his landscapes, but I can’t get emotionally involved with them. I appreciate his vision, but can’t help mourning the losses incurred whilst fulfilling that dream. Still, in in tercentenary year, it would be rude to ignore him entirely, and yesterday I determined to see Croome Park, his first major commission, for myself. It was Highly Commended yesterday for best innovation. Sadly I missed the ‘Sky Cafe’ – on the scaffolding that surrounded the house last year, but I’ll enjoy the results of the spruce-up instead.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a good costume must be in want of adventure…

Image: Paul Lindus

Halfway through Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, heroine Elizabeth Bennet takes a vacation with her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner to the Derbyshire Peaks, home to a certain Mr Darcy. Before visiting the fictional Pemberley, Miss Bennet enjoys “the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth, Dovedale, or the Peak”. It’s an odd episode, and one so very specific about the places the party visits it’s clear the author knew exactly what she was talking about.

Image: Paul Lindus

Image: Paul Lindus

All these places are still visitable – and, indeed, are visited, by thousands each year. But I was curious. All of these places – often outdoor, and requiring of vigorous exercise to experience – would have been done by Elizabeth – and, of course Austen herself – wearing flimsy, Empire-line Regency costume. How would wearing such inefficient clobber have affected the way these two ladies, real and imagined, enjoyed their visit?

Which led me to wonder further: Could dressing like a Regency traveller give unfamiliar insight to familiar great houses and towering peaks?

Image: Paul Lindus

It is not the object of this work to give a description of Derbyshire, nor of any ofthe remarkable places through which their route thither lay; Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenelworth, Birmingham, &c. are sufficiently known.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.

We ‘sufficiently know’ most of these even now – great houses, dreaming spires and even what was then a novelty: industry. Birmingham’s steam-fuelled blast furnaces, mechanised cotton mills and chemical factories would have been tourist attractions. Health and Safety could whistle.

Image: Paul Lindus

I can’t help suspecting Blenheim, the first stop on my journey, might have inspired Austen to create Mr Darcy’s terrifying relative Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s country pile Rosings, and much of that feeling comes directly from my visit…

Image: Paul Lindus

This kind of place was way above the social station of the

Image:Paul Lindus

Bennet family. Mr and Mrs Gardiner, as ‘gentlefolk, would have applied to the housekeeper to be shown around the state rooms much as we might walk around a National Trust property, but they would not have been welcomed as invited guests. Then, as today, this was the home of the aristocracy, and Elizabeth in her respectable but decidedly home-made clothes would have known her place.

Perhaps it was the prim day dress, bonnet and gloves ensemble that lent a self-consciousness Lizzie must have felt walking up those great golden-stone steps. I felt genuinely small in comparison to the sheer splendour of the massive columns, ornate carvings, towering ceilings and very finest of fine art.

It was spectacular. It was also slightly intimidating, a sensation I have never experienced walking round a stately home in modern mufti, and it gave me a little shiver. As did the massive banqueting table and fabulous painted ceiling.

Image: Paul Lindus

A much smaller space gave the biggest shiver of all; this time a delightful one. The exquisitely-painted Indian Room’s glass-panelled doors look out across the grounds, enjoying an intimacy that conjures lazy afternoon tea for visiting ladies of leisure. The murals arrived in 1820, so Lizzie would have just missed them; the room was called The Stone Gallery in her day.

No claim is laid that Austen enjoyed a cuppa here, perhaps she never did, but as I sipped champagne, chose one of the 14 blends of tea and nibbled the delicate finger sandwiches and cakes of the Winston Tea (named for Blenheim’s most famous resident, Sir Winston Churchill) I couldn’t help dreaming that maybe, just maybe, she sat here too.

Image: Paul Lindus

The cable car operator called the day ‘murksome’. Matlock’s Heights of Abraham, named for the scene of Wolfe’s Battle of Quebec, were so shrouded in wet, white fog there was no view whatsoever. Inclemency notwithstanding, by the early 19th Century Matlock’s views were a major draw.

Image: Paul LindusI

The Great Rutland Cavern was opened to the public in 1810. Doughty travelers were lowered in buckets into what was still a working lead mine, frocks, bonnets n’all for a penny.

It was another penny if you wanted to go up again, this vital information not advertised on the way down. I was relieved to find the service is no longer provided; a walk-in entrance has been made instead. The Great Masson Cavern, opened in 1844, does, however, boast a round, ‘candle’ chandelier hanging from its roof, demonstrating the kind of light 19th Century tourists would have experienced.

As every visitor to Derbyshire knows, the weather changes by the hour. The following day the sun was shining, the grass glowing, the rivers sparkling and the blue skies above Dovedale warm and inviting. There’s no argument as to why Elizabeth and her family would have fallen in love with the soft, rolling hills, their mellow grey, dry-stone walls and woolly white lambs. It’s enchanting.

Image: Paul Lindus

Many scholars have argued Bakewell, four miles from Chatsworth House, was the inspiration for the village of Lambton, where Lizzie stays before her visit to Pemberley. The town remains compact, gorgeous and, apart from the constant traffic, not unlike Jane Austen would have known it, with tiny courtyards, meandering alleys and what seems like dozens of bakeries, each claiming to be the one and only home of the original Bakewell pudding.

Image: Paul Lindus

I was entranced to find a ribbon shop in a pink, half-timbered courtyard that would have kept Kitty and Lydia in enough lace to drive Mr Bennet to distraction. Lunch was at Byways, a cute 17th Century tearooms serving such enormous portions it provided evening picnic too, the solicitous staff donating a most un-Regency plastic box to transport it in.

Image: Paul Lindus

Like Lizzie herself, I was rather nervous of visiting the great house at Chatsworth. Despite being named in the novel, it’s often regarded as the model for Pemberley, and the view that greets one’s carriage (or in my case, car) as it turns the corner still catches the breath.

Image: Paul LindusImage: Paul Lindus

I chose my grandest dress for the occasion, a gold-striped, paper-satin affair, though the wind got the better of my hair. I’m guessing Lizzie would have had a lady’s maid. I met one, actually, a costumed guide in a bedroom, though I would have needed a time machine to make use of her services, since she was from the 1890s. Once again I felt self-conscious, detained by curious members of the public, but the staff were unsurprised. “We get a lot of people dressing up,” one steward told me. “We had a couple from Australia recently, on their honeymoon, in full costume.”

Like Elizabeth, I toured the parts of the house open to general inspection, pausing, as she did, at a window to enjoy its prospect.

“And of this place,” thought she, “I might have been mistress.”

Sadly I had no such illusions.

Image: Paul LindusImage: Paul Lindus

At last, the Peaks themselves. Bleak on the sunniest day, their stark beauty is captivating and awesome in equal measures. Elizabeth Bennet would have worn kid-leather ankle boots. Mine were somewhat sturdier. We come from namby-pamby times, and I was just about to clamber about over rocks in a frock. And a Bonnet. Which refused to stay on in the gale-force wind. Happily the Air Ambulance charity shop in Bakewell keeps a supply of hatpins in a drawer. “We don’t get much call for them,” said the lady behind the counter as I bought three. I guess not.

Spencer buttoned, bonnet pinned, shawl clasped, parasol clutched, I tramped over thin soil, through sparse bracken, past uninterested sheep stolidly chewing on whatever sheep chew that high up. Smooth, round rocks I might have skipped over in jeans became awkward obstacles, shallow pools of rainwater major hazards. Once again I admired the hardiness of our 19th Century forebears, determined to enjoy the sights of England in spite of their clothes.

Image: Paul Lindus

Then the top. And that view. Gosh, the Peaks are inspiring, whatever period you live in.

Thomas Tosier is pounding roasted cacao beans to a paste on a hot granite slab. He is wearing full periwig, breeches and a long waistcoat. The slab has taken an hour and a half to heat up but that’s nothing to the 30-odd hours it will take to grind the beans to sticky perfection. It’s all in several days’ work when you’re channelling George I’s personal chocolatier.

After nearly 300 years languishing as a store room, Hampton Court’s chocolate kitchen is open for business once more and the palace’s doughty experimental archaeologists are discovering what it’s like to make a mug of cocoa wearing a wig.

When your palace has sixteen hundred rooms, it’s easy to mislay the odd chocolate kitchen. “People used to point and say ‘Oh it was over there somewhere,” says Marc Meltonville, food historian at Hampton Court, “but no one knew for sure.”

Historic Royal Palaces/Richard Lea Hair

The palace was first opened to the public by the Victorians who told all sorts of ‘legends’ to a sensation-hungry public. “It’s when most of the ghosts turned up,” admits Meltonville. When the food historians decided to see if there was any truth in the rumours, they knew the much-mentioned chocolate kitchen could just be 19th Century hype. Even if it had existed, many buildings had been demolished over the years or lost in the 1986 fire.

The Chocolate Room, which once housed dining luxuries, is dressed with ceramics, copper cooking equipment, bespoke chocolate serving silverware, glassware and linens of the time.

The team’s lucky break was an inventory made after the death of William III. The clerk had started in one corner of Fountain Court and worked his way round. Door Eight in the cloister-like passageway led to Chocolate Nirvana. “I’d seen a spit shelf in there,” says Meltonville, “so I’d assumed it was a kitchen of some sort, but then there were dozens of tiny kitchens all over the place.” Nevertheless a key was found for the mysterious Door Eight.

“I’ve never seen so much oasis,’ says Polly Putnam, curator of the project. “Racks, pots, steel shelves. It was like walking into a florist’s without the flowers.” For years the room had been piled high with equipment for the annual flower show. No one had bothered to delve more deeply than to fetch a few vases for prize begonias.

The team emptied it intending to reconstruct a generic 18th Century chocolatier’s workshop but as the debris disappeared it became clear this was not the blank room they’d expected. “We’d actually found a kitchen,” says Marc Meltonville.

Historic Royal Palaces/Richard Lea Hair

Everything was intact. The charcoal fireplace where the beans would have been roasted, complete with elaborate spit mechanism and smoke-jack operating system (inside the chimney, but with a clever projected display so visitors can see how it worked); Georgian shelves and a cupboard where equipment was stored; a brick stove over which the chocolate would have been heated and, to everyone’s surprise, the original fold-down prep-table, still firmly fixed to the wall.

Coffee houses were all the rage in bourgeois London in the 18th Century, attracting everyone from businessmen and merchants to courtesans and rakes. Tea drinking was hugely popular too but for the super-well-heeled chocolate was the apogee of classy beverages. Charles II started the trend in the 1660s. William III and Georges I and II all used the chocolate kitchen at Hampton Court.

Thomas Tosier was George I’s personal chocolate chef. “He would have provided the whole package,” says Marc Meltonville, “no one in London had chocolate like his.” Tosier would have roasted and ground the beans, extracted spice oils, invented and adjusted flavours then served his confections in a variety of exquisite glasses, cups and bowls.

Tosier became famous, though his wife Grace was even more of a celebrity, admired not just for her chocolate but her gloves, hat and full bosom. After her husband’s death she remarried, but kept the Tosier brand, opening up an exclusive chocolate house in Greenwich.

Historic Royal Palaces/Richard Lea Hair

The suite of rooms given over to Tosier are much daintier in feel than the classic 16th Century kitchens Hampton Court visitors are familiar with. “It was the introduction of elegance after all the meat, pies and production-line cookery of the Tudor palace,” says Polly Putnam.

The nearby Chocolate Room has the feel of a butler’s pantry. It once housed the expensive ingredients and delicate serving apparatus. Today it has been brought to life with exquisite reproductions made for the project. Fancy glasses, bottles and dishes have been hand-blown from a 17th Century glass recipe; porcelain posset pots and porringers recreated from fragments unearthed from various digs at the palace.

Chocolate pots (distinguishable from coffee pots by the hole in the top for a whisk) and ‘chocolate frames’ – metal saucers for handle-less cups – have been made from pewter, a popular metal in Georgian times, though the King’s own vessels would have been gold or silver.

The kitchen is a particularly lucky survivor as the room opposite, just yards away, was destroyed in the 1986 fire. This, however, has meant curators have been able to create an exact replica of the kitchen for the resident ‘historic chefs’ to discover exactly how the various monarchs enjoyed their cocoa.

Much of this will take place in front of visitors, giving a unique experience of how the process worked and, in Hampton Court’s trademark style, will be in full costume to find out how the clothes would have affected production.

“I am keen to get experimenting with oils,” says Marc Meltonville, who has been researching dozens of original recipes. “I want to use chilli, Jamaica pepper, Guinea pepper and aniseed. You can grind them up and mix them with water, but infusing them in oil will improve the flavour.”

Historic Royal Palaces/Richard Lea Hair

The chocolate would have been melted with water, milk, wine or other alcohol then, unlike its savoury South American ancestors, mixed with sugar and exotic spices such as vanilla, cardamom, aniseed, ‘Grain of Paradise and ‘Roses of Alexandria’.

The earliest recipes date from the Stuart period. One, ‘The King’s Chocolate’, is the first of four ‘tasters’ visitors can try on a flight of historic chocolate cups in the Fountain Court café. From a 1661 publication called The India Nectar, which purports to divulge the secret of ‘how the natives do it’ in the Americas the flavour is dark, dense and with a complex melange of spices that linger on the tongue.

Hans Sloane first put milk into chocolate around 1700 and the second sample is a Georgian style drink, with overtones of aniseed. The third is a classic Victorian recipe, very similar to modern hot chocolate and, after the darkness of the previous two drinks, rather sweet and sickly. The last item on the chocolate tasting menu has been designed by today’s palace chefs, reflecting a modern style. Made from vanilla-infused white chocolate, which uses only cocoa butter, rather than beans, and with a dried raspberry garnish it is a very different drink, sweet and aromatic.

Hampton Court’s chocolate kitchen, the only surviving example of its kind, is no longer a legend whispered by sweet-toothed romantics, but Marc Meltonville is not done yet. He’s got his eye on a locked engine room a few doors down from the freshly-found chocolate haven. He suspects it was a wine cellar, though until he can find a key, it will remain a mystery. The palace has not yielded all its secrets just yet.

Hampton Court’s Georgian Chocolate Kitchens are open to the public as part of the entry price. Dates and times for live chocolate making sessions can be found at www.hrp.org.uk. Historic chocolate taster-flights are available from the Fountain Court café, priced £3.95

Where do you start with Doctor John Dee? Mathematician, alchemist, magician, astrologer, astronomer, spy, angel-botherer, Dee was a true Elizabethan polymath. From early theatrical leanings, directing student productions at Cambridge with astonishing special effects, to advising John Frobisher on trade routes, Dee’s was an enquiring, creative, active mind.

He may have ended his life in poverty, separated not only from his place in society but his precious library but he – a man who adored whimsy and fun – had the last laugh. He has lived on in hearts and minds from William Shakespeare to Derek Jarman, Christopher Marlowe to Neil Gaiman. He is, according to who you believe, Prospero, Faustus, 007 and, even more tantalisingly – himself.

John Dee straddles the ancient and the modern. He embraced medieval ideas of angels, alchemy and the elusive philosophers’ stone while foreseeing a future in science and commerce. He was the first man to write about a putative ‘Brytish Impire’ yet failed to see his own downfall at the arrival of James I, an obsessive witch hunter. He lost his place at court, his influence and, most heartbreaking of all, his books.

It’s painful to imagine the agony a man who had spent his life not just acquiring books but poring over them, using them, annotating them and, often, doodling in them, must have felt when, on his arrival home from abroad, he discovered his house had been ransacked and his books stolen.

No one knows exactly who took them, but a former pupil of Dee’s, one Nicholas Saunder, certainly acquired a fair few of them; did his best to scratch, burn, soak and even bleach Dee’s name from their pages and scrawl his own over the top.

In some ways, it’s a blessing (for us; Dee was devastated) that the library was stolen, as at least 150 of them have ended up in the archives of the Royal College of Physicians, donated as part of a larger collection after the college lost their own library in the Great Fire of London.

Now, for the first time ever, an exhibition to the extraordinary Dr Dee gives us an insight into a truly enquiring, whimsical, romantic, curious mind. We see notes in his own hand – one, about the Trojan War, comments there is no mention of the horse in a ‘therefore this book is clearly rubbish’ tone of voice. Somewhere else he’s scribbled a possible family tree. A single line in another book is illustrated by a magnificent galleon, while above it is the Tudor equivalent of a hyperlink – a little armillary sphere to remind Dee where something is.

Throughout the work, tiny arrows in the shape of exquisite little pointing fingers, complete with fancy Elizabethan cuffs (called ‘manicules’) direct us to the best bits, while, in probably the world’s first example of a pop-up activity book, tiny origami pyramids show us how solids are constructed.

To this day no one knows exactly how the volvelles (moving paper circles) elsewhere actually work.

The overwhelming feeling you get from this exhibition is that you’d like John Dee. His portrait is that of a dour old bloke with a long beard and a weary eye. Perhaps that’s what he became and, given the way he was treated in the autumn of his life, it’s hardly surprising.

Modern treatments make him a terrifying necromancer, a sorcerer, a sinister character to scare your children with. But who couldn’t like a man who scribbles pictures of funny beardy faces in his books? Who plays with paper triangles and has a fondness for love poetry?

This free exhibition is unmissable, whether you’re there to gawp at Dee’s obsidian ‘black’ mirror (reputedly gazed into by Queen Elizabeth herself…) his scrying glass and crystal ball; to speculate over the late 19th Century painting of Dee performing magic before the Queen, whose circle of skulls has been mysteriously painted out – or just to enjoy the curiosity, depth and downright humour of his lost library, it’s something to savour.

If you’re in a hurry you could, frankly, miss out the accompanying film, which, though having an interesting aside about a wall in Bexley, otherwise says little you can’t find out for yourself an awful lot more quickly.

Both politically and geographically, the English Civil War (1642 – 51) shaped the country we know today. Nine years of fighting followed by a Commonwealth government meant no English monarchy could ever regain the absolute power rulers once enjoyed. The Divine Right of Kings had been severed with the head of Charles I and the rest of the world took note.

Hundreds of American colonists remembered their ticket to the new world was not one-way and returned to fight, mainly for the Parliamentarians. They may have regretted their choice on the Restoration when, contrary to promises, the new King Charles II’s spies chased the regicides back across the Atlantic, but the values both sides had fought for lingered long in the soul.

England itself changed, as the demolition job begun by Henry VIII with the monasteries and religious institutions was finished in the secular world by Oliver Cromwell, determined to prevent future rebellion. Castles, walled towns and fortified houses were systematically razed to the ground and the land reshaped to a new world order.

Image: Paul LindusImage: Paul Lindus

The Midlands saw some of the fiercest fighting, not least because they were ‘in the middle.’ Strategically important, on the cross of the Great North Road and the Fosse Way, Newark suffered three separate sieges between 1642 and 1646.

Image: Paul Lindus

The town has never forgotten the months of depravation, the devastating loss of life or the humiliating sting of defeat. Defiant even after receiving orders from the captured king to surrender, the mayor declared it was better to “Trust in God and sally forth.” It’s still the town’s motto. Newark was the obvious choice for England’s first museum dedicated to telling the story from bloody start to bloodier finish.

Image: Paul Lindus

The National Civil War Centre is housed in a fascinating building spanning five centuries: a 1529 Tudor core, Georgian schoolhouse, Victorian additions and modern glass carapace. The storytelling, however, is pure twenty-first century.

Image: Paul Lindus

The artefacts are given room to breathe. There is minimal text on the wall with optional ‘digging deeper’ information paddles where visitors can read more if they choose. The almost-obligatory armour-and-musket displays are supplemented by fascinating items showing how ordinary life continued as best it could.

Image: Paul LindusImage: Paul Lindus

From what folk ate and drank to what it was like to billet soldiers in your home, diamond-shaped coins minted during the siege to valuables buried by terrified people who never returned for them, a fearful, claustrophobic existence is evoked in displays, artefacts and hands-on experience designed to appeal beyond the usual battlefield buffs.

Image: Paul Lindus

There is something deeply personal about standing in front of the near-complete last outfit worn by 26 year-old John Hussey and noting the hole blasted through the armoured breastplate matches the one in the buff coat underneath, both gifts from the musket ball with his name on it. He took four days to die.

Image: Paul LIndus

Another buff coat (thick leather jerkin) belonged to Colonel Francis Hacker, the man who walked the king to his execution, albeit with courtesy and respect. On the Restoration, the kindness he had shown Charles at the block was repaid. Hacker got off lightly: merely hanged, spared the drawing and quartering reserved for the other regicides.

Image: Paul Lindus

Hacker is one of a handful of individuals from all aspects of the war whose stories have been chosen for a series of broadcast-quality, five-minute films within the exhibition. These mini-documentaries are to regular museum audio-visuals what a Hasselblad is to a box brownie and a genuine must-see. I have never been moved to tears by a museum video before.

Image: Paul Lindus

Although the main items will remain on permanent display, the centre is keeping much of its powder dry for the moment, bringing out ammunition from its vast armoury of stored objects with changing exhibitions focusing on different aspects of the war. In the next display, on Civil War medicine, precision bone-saws, instruments for removing musket balls and a self-propelled wheelchair will show the ingenuity spawned by necessity even if the shocking, hand-shaped branding iron for deserters demonstrates a different kind of creativity.

Image: Paul Lindus

Museum shops don’t usually merit mention, but this one goes above and beyond the call of duty. No tourist tat here. From traditional slipware pottery in authentic 17th Century designs through horn drinking vessels to bread baked to Civil War recipes, everything has been specially produced or sourced. You can even choose sides via your real ale. A nice Cavalier Golden Ale, perhaps? Maybe a Roundhead Bitter? Or a good old Puritan Stout? Each comes with its own feather for your cap.

Image: Paul Lindus

The centre opened with a vast, 900-soul-strong re-enactment of the taking of Newark. Over two days visitors experienced the terror of standing inside bombarded battlements while the deafening cannon fire shook the very walls.

Image: Paul Lindus

The sight of exhausted cavaliers lowering the red flag of defence and marching their surrender to Parliamentarians impressed by the dignity of their enemies was oddly moving. So moving, in fact, that it looks to become a regular event.

It was a good time to launch the new National Civil War Trail. The best way to experience it is to download an app which allows you to point your mobile device at plaques around town to see more of those excellent short films, each pertaining to the site where you’re standing. They are stunning, but not for everyone, merely due to the amount of memory you need to download the data. For those traveling without cell phones the trail is available as a free map.

Image: Paul Lindus

Newark is compact. The castle is a five minute walk from the railway station, and the market place with most of the historic buildings a cough and a spit from there. The black and white, half-timbered Governor’s House is now a bakery and the gloriously coloured panels of the Old White Hart a few doors away house a building society, but both have been immaculately restored. The Old White Hart still boasts a little row of pastel-shaded figurines along its walls.

Image: Paul Lindus

Down the road the Prince Rupert, built in 1452, was originally a merchant’s house, but had been an alehouse known as the Woolpack for 60 years when war broke out. It was used as billeting for soldiers and a door in the cellar indicates a now-lost underground tunnel to the castle. Today the Prince Rupert, named for the king’s wayward nephew, is a cosy, rambling hostelry that manages to be both bright and snug, serving decent pub-grub, real ale and bonhomie.

The Charles I Coffee House should, by rights, be the Queen Henrietta Maria Coffee House. Charles’ loyal queen dined there during a long visit to the town. It’s in the shadow of the handsome St Mary Magdalene church whose spire, the highest in Nottinghamshire, still has a visible hole under one window where it was hit by a musket ball.

Image: Paul Lindus

Cromwell ordered Newark’s citizens to demolish the castle, now a striking shell. It is, however, far more complete than, say, Nottingham’s razed fortress, for one simple reason. After months of siege, the exhausted town was further ravaged, this time by bubonic plague. Townsfolk were too sick to wield sledgehammers and no outlying villager was going anywhere near a plague town. Much of the great wall still stands proud, albeit dented by cannon balls and blackened by gunpowder.

Further out, the Queen’s Sconce (the Dutch word for fort) remains an impressive earthwork, again never formally flattened thanks to plague.

The new trail only covers Newark, but the Civil War laughed at boundaries. Southwell is an absolute must on any visit to the area. A graceful Minster town, it’s best known today as the birthplace of the Bramley apple. The original tree still exists in a back garden, just over 200 years old and still fruiting, though sadly ownership has recently changed and access is no longer easy.

Southwell is, however, a key place to experience history up close and very personal. It’s possible to sleep in the very room King Charles I spent his last night as a free man. The ancient, half-timbered Kings Arms was already around 500 years old and Charles, the tenth monarch to sleep there, should have slept well. He had met with Scottish commissioners in the room downstairs and believed he had finally secured sanctuary. The following morning, however, the Scots betrayed the king, handing him over to the Parliamentarians for a massive ransom.

The inn was renamed The Saracen’s Head after the sword that, allegedly, executed the king. If the bedroom is unoccupied and you ask nicely you may be able to see the extremely rare Elizabethan wall painting Charles would have stared at that final night, only discovered in 1986 when whitewash was removed for a planned refurbishment. Ask very nicely and they’ll show you the room where Charles met the double-crossing Scots. It, too, has a fabulous Elizabethan mural.

The ruined Archbishops Palace, where the doomed Cardinal Wolsey spent his last summer before avoiding execution by Henry VIII by dying on his way back to London is particularly beautiful. Soft, lush gardens and sweet sounds from the chorister school form a stark contrast with the grand state chamber upstairs where Charles was taken on his capture. The Minster itself is both grand and somehow homely and a walk around the surrounding streets yields sumptuous Georgian architecture that belies the town’s troubled past.

The classic children’s history book 1066 And All That boils the English Civil War down to two sides: Right but Rotten, Wrong but Romantic. It’s a neat idea but does nothing to unpack reality. Three hundred and seventy years ago, brother fought brother in a fundamental clash of ideologies. The Civil War Trail poses a question – which side would you have chosen?

Parliamentarians destroyed all but the vast labyrinth of cellars in the cliff below the original medieval castle. The present Ducal Mansion was built shortly after the restoration, but gutted by fire in 1831 by rioting residents of ‘the worst slums in the British Empire outside India.’ It is now the city’s museum.

Mortimer’s Hole

An extraordinary cave, alleged to be the secret tunnel by which the true heir to the dead Edward II’s throne, his son, entered the castle and captured his mother and lover, charging them with murder. It was used for storing ammunition during the Civil War.

Used as a base to recruit soldiers for both sides of the war, Ye Olde Salutation was briefly known as the Soldier and Citizen during the Commonwealth. The name may sound unwieldy, but it’s actually in shortened form. Before its rebuild in 1240, the original alehouse was known as The Archangel Gabriel Salutes the Virgin Mary.

This feature by Sandra Lawrence originally appeared in British Heritage magazine. If you would like to syndicate this story or commission Sandra to write something similar please contact her at the following address, missing out the obvious gap…

And that’s how, for centuries, people have visited the great houses of England. Long before the National Trust opened houses for all to visit on a charming but somewhat impersonal level, prospective sightseers would apply to the housekeeper and, if there was nothing pressing going on and someone was available, they would be shown around.

I wouldn’t have the nerve to call a privately-owned country house and just ask to be shown around these days but there is at least one secret gem left for which, if the same 19th Century housekeepers’ conditions are met, this is only too possible…

Carlton Towers “has been here since Domesday,” according to Lord Gerald Fizalan Howard, the house’s present incumbent. Of course during that time it’s been remodelled more than once. Its most recent plumage is Victorian Gothic, built in the 1870s by Lord Gerald’s great, great uncle Henry, 9th Lord Beaumont. “He was totally mad,” says Lord Gerald, with a glee that belies what must be not a small pang of frustration. “ He had delusions of grandeur. Went from inheritance at 21 to bankruptcy at 23.” What Henry left, however, is a Gothic confection of magnificent proportions.

If you don’t like dogs, don’t bother going to Carlton Towers. They’re everywhere, both literally and metaphorically. Stained glass, stone, wood, plaster, paint, gargoyles, even the family coat of arms, quartered down ten centuries to a veritable chessboard, has a pair of hunting talbots guarding it. The present canine residents, two black Labradors and a Jack Russell, accompany us as we go round the house, nosing in at every opportunity, shoving past each other and quietly pilfering the odd sandwich from the lower tier of the afternoon tea stand. “I’d like to be reborn as a dog,’ says Lord Gerald, looking somewhat longingly at the Labrador stretched out at his feet, unaware of the financial headaches of owning a country pile in the 21st Century.

Hiring architectural heavyweight Augustus Welby Pugin (of Houses of Parliament fame) Great Uncle Henry had visions of creating a castle beyond the dreams of a crazed German prince – a fairytale palace with gigantic banqueting halls, massive towers and a huge block containing nothing but a staircase that went up – and then down again – to be visited by all the crowned heads of Europe, not to mention the Pope himself.

Sadly Henry’s appetite for huge was too rich even for the blood of the Gothic Master himself. Henry and Pugin argued then parted company. Lord Gerald dramatically opens a giant double door at the end of the ballroom – to reveal a blank wall. “One day I’d like to paint a mural of what it would have been like,” he says. “A giant staircase to nowhere…”

John Francis Bentley (of Westminster Cathedral fame) took up the architectural baton, bringing a lighter touch, not to mention some glorious furniture. “If it’s got a ‘B’ on it, it’s by Bentley” says Lord Gerald, tickled that although the B should be for Henry (Baron Beaumont) there was nothing Bentley liked better than literally stamping his own mark on things. By this point, though, Henry’s cash was running out and another B, bankruptcy, loomed.

For much of the 20th Century, the house languished under dustsheets, just about saved by relatives and some astute marriages but the white elephant of the family, the main estate being the glorious Arundel Castle in Sussex. Carlton passed through aunts and uncles, fathers and grandfathers not unloved, just too much of ‘a project’ for anyone to take on seriously.

Being a second son, Lord Gerald missed out on Arundel Castle, but on marrying Emma in 1990, made the decision to move from their home in London and try turning around Carlton’s fortunes. In winter 1991, with a two-month old baby and a broken down Alpha Romeo they drove up north to start a new life at Carlton Towers.

It’s been – and continues to be – a labour of love. Whilst much of the original decoration in the glorious staterooms survived, the rest of the house was uninhabitable by 20th Century standards.

“The kitchen was rat-infested and there were bare lightbulbs in every room,” says Lady Emma. The Fizalan-Howards made their home in the oldest part of the house and continue to live there today.

They then set about the somewhat larger task of reviving the remaining 16 guest bedrooms, gilded staterooms, plaster-filigree fireplaces, vestibules, staircase, landings and drawing room. On the way they made some intriguing finds. Shoving three excited dogs out of the way Lord Gerald gets on his hands and knees to lift a trapdoor to a 17th Century priest hole, discovered under one of the bedroom floors and used by one Fr. Thomas Thwing, upon whom History has bestowed the unfortunate ‘honour’ of being the last priest to be hanged, drawn and quartered in England, in 1680.

Traditionally land paid for English estates’ upkeep, but with Lord Henry’s bankruptcy, much of the 20-30,000 acres were sold and though the land left remains farmed and tenanted, it can’t pay for the kind of work an important example of Pugin and Bentley needs.

At this point many a country house owner either opens the house to the public, turns it into a hotel/ conference centre/ golf club/ safari park/ festival venue or just turns it over to the National Trust. But this was Gerald and Emma’s home and besides, they had spent their lives making it personal to them – the above options would have stripped Carlton Towers of its heart.

Without knowing it, however, “Nutty Great Uncle Henry” had created the perfect venue for weddings, and this appealed to the romantic in the present owners. “We fell in love at Carlton Towers,” says Lord Gerald. “I invited Emma to a house party here and showed her round.” He chuckles. “Then we all got so drunk I had to show her around again in the morning.” The double tour must have worked – there were 320 guests at the wedding.

Unlike the traditional country house based around a medieval hall or perhaps an Elizabethan ‘E’, much of Carlton’s ancient house is on one end. Great Uncle Henry’s magnificent baronial wing provides the venue for a fairytale wedding, even down to a fabulously gothic, armour-lined reception area. “People liked that it was our home, not a country house hotel. There were children’s tricycles in the drive, and that appealed to them,” says Lord Gerald.

“We love hearing the music,” adds Lady Emma. “Cleaning our teeth to Michael Jackson and peering out of the window at the bride’s dress. We could never fill these rooms ourselves, except at Christmas, so it’s good to see them used.”

Realising that not everyone who wants to see Carlton Towers is getting married, TV was the inspiration for a new idea. They had already been the setting for a movie – A Handful of Dust, where Lord Gerald’s father delighted in being a forelock-tugging extra behind Angelica Huston, but more recently Downton Abbey’s elegant country house parties made them think other people might like to take over Carlton Towers for an evening or weekend – perhaps for a special wedding anniversary or a significant birthday.

With the house staff on hand for lunches and dinners, afternoon teas and the kind of breakfasts you only get in Yorkshire guests can tramp around Carlton Towers’ remaining thousand-odd acres, go tench fishing on the lake or do a little clay pigeon shooting.

They could even hold a little fancy dress party, like the one the Fitzalan-Howards are going to this weekend. Lord Gerald’s been raking through the family closets and has found an old military costume. He puts it on to give us a twirl. “Can’t think how he wore this for any length of time,” he says, wriggling out of the jacket. “Just feel the weight of it.”

The clock in the grand tower, ticking on and off since 1777, chimes and we make our way to the Venetian Drawing Room for tea.

I wonder whether people who aren’t necessarily in the market for a wedding and for whom a large house party might be twinkle in the eye rather than a firm booking might ever be able to catch a glimpse inside the otherwise private Carlton Towers. The reply arouses the Elizabeth Bennet in me.

Whilst the Gardiners may have sent a copper-plate note to the housekeeper via a lad from the village, these days an email or phone call a week or so ahead should suffice. Monday to Friday is best, as is the proposed visit time, as Carlton Towers has weddings most weekends. But if the house isn’t being used for an event (or one of those house parties) and there’s someone available, staff will be happy to show visitors around and give them afternoon tea for around £28 per head, on an availability basis. You could even arrange to stay over if the bedrooms are free, though this is absolutely not a hotel so it’s not always possible.

Don’t be in the slightest bit surprised if you run into Lord Gerald, Lady Emma and those dogs at some point on your visit. After all, it is their home…

A version of this feature by Sandra Lawrence originally appeared in British Heritage magazine. If you would like to syndicate this story or commission Sandra to write something similar please contact her at the following address, missing out the obvious gap…

Hard to imagine this land-locked paradise was once the bad boy of the southern realm; the 18th century smuggling capital of England. At its height pretty much the entire town was involved in some capacity or other. Even today many of the buildings have interconnecting attics and dozens of alleys and passageways so illicit goods (and humans) could slink between houses under the very nose of His Majesty’s bailiff, tasked with the nigh-on impossible job of trying to stop the ‘trade.’

From medieval times until silting clogged its harbour to marshland, Rye was a thriving port – so much so that in 1336 it was named an ‘Antient Town’, affiliated with Edward the Confessor’s Cinque Ports, a trading confederation originally intended as a defensive measure. It didn’t work; the French burned it down in 1377.

The rebuild included massive stone walls and heavily defended gates. The only entrance at high tide, Land Gate, still exists. The shoreline gradually receded, however, and by the 16th century thriving port had become wealthy merchant town, with fine civic buildings, pomp, ceremony – and a healthy disregard for customs and excise.

On a foggy November day, standing by the 13th century Ypres Tower looking down onto the marshes hundreds of feet below, you can really get a flavour for those times. Fog lingers over low, flat land; modern wind turbines poke out from the swirling mists like eerie sentinels.

It’s easy to imagine jolly locals ferrying illicit cargoes via paths the King’s Men had no hope of following, but the romance of smuggled brandy and silks can overshadow the unpleasant truth. People got rich through this, and they preserved their power through whatever means necessary, whether bribery, intimidation or violence.

The Ypres Tower is now a museum where, among the more grisly artefacts can be seen the gibbet that held the corpse of John Breads. Breads plotted to kill the mayor, but accidentally stabled the dignitary’s brother-in-law, who’d borrowed his cloak for the evening. Breads was hanged then gibbeted as an example, but it did little to discourage the anarchy.

Centre of all illegal goings-on, the Mermaid Inn, (rebuilt in 1420; the cellars date back to 1156) was headquarters to the notorious Hawkhurst gang, so brazen they would leave their loaded pistols on the table as they drank. The inn is still a must-see, if not a must-stay, its roaring fires and ancient timbers welcome on a cold night. The fish stew is excellent. With an alleged revolving cupboard and a tunnel running between it and the nearby Old Bell pub, no magistrate dared interfere.

Cash continued to pour into Rye. Some of it was even lawfully acquired. Much of the gains, however gotten, were spent on beautifying the town. Climb to the top of St Mary’s church tower and enjoy the ornate roofs, fancy pilasters, wrought-iron curlicues and fine chimneys of Rye’s confidently wealthy. Below, fat, gilded cherubs known as “Quarter Boys” because they chime the quarter, not the hour, have been bonging their bells on the church clock since 1760.

These days it’s hard to believe Rye was so lawless. It’s as respectable as they come and a magnet to visitors and would-be residents alike. From late-17th Century Jeake’s House hotel to the old grammar school on the high street, built in 1636 and now a fascinating second hand record shop, virtually every building is worth a second glance. The funny little pipes sticking out of many frontages on the high street are flagpole holders. There’s nothing Rye likes more than a spot of pageantry, dating back to the time when the town hosted Queen Elizabeth I for three days.

Watch out for quirky house names – “The House with Two Front Doors,” “The House with the Seat,” “The House Opposite” – and curious artistic endeavours from carved planks to bizarre mosaics and interesting displays in people’s front-room windows.

The odd-looking 18th century brick domes scattered around the town belong to an early piped water scheme, proof of just how well-off Rye’s inhabitants had become. The original stocks up near the Ypres Castle pub clinging to the hillside and overlooking the distant sea provide more evidence that Rye was not always the upstanding community it is now.

One building in particular, Lamb House (National Trust), has had a succession of famous residents. When George I was stranded during a storm in 1726, James Lamb invited him to his newly-built home. The king stayed three days, though he spoke no English and his hosts no German, and even though Lamb’s wife gave birth the first night. The child was named George of course, His Majesty the rather regal godfather.

In 1897 novelist Henry James moved in and stayed until his death in 1916. In the 1920s comic writer E F Benson lived there and wrote his famous Mapp and Lucia books, set in ‘Tilling,’ a barely-disguised Rye. Miss Mapp’s home Mallards is very obviously Lamb House, and recently found fame once more in a BBC TV adaptation. In much the same spirit as the books, the whole town must have got involved in the filming as several of the exteriors – and their attendant interiors – are clearly recognisable.

Rye is compact. The tiny Victorian railway station is just 40 minutes away from St Pancras and the whole town is easily walkable, if a little hilly, in a weekend. Before you make your way up to the town proper, do take a moment to look around what is left of old Rye Harbour and the strand (an archaic word for ‘beach’) where old, clapboarded warehouses now house antique and craft shops, tea rooms and restaurants.

From there, wend slowly up the hill, taking time to poke around, peeking down passageways and through creeper-clad gateways. Enjoy the jumble of styles and periods from Dutch-gables to Queen Anne hooded doorways, half-timbered Tudor gems to magnificent Georgian fanlights.

Unlike most modern British towns Rye has managed to maintain a relatively firm stand against chain stores; the majority of its shops remaining independent. Even the supermarket is a local, family-run business. An excellent cook store boasts pottery you won’t find elsewhere and a musty basement full of unique basket ware. Bow-fronted bakeries tempt with iced cakes and fruity buns.

Rows of lead soldiers march across the bull’s-eye window of an antique model shop. A fabulous stationery store in the high street appears not to have changed at all since the 1950s, with a fascinating jumble of magazines, general goods, fancy wares and, upstairs, an old-fashioned toy department.

Don’t miss what is, perhaps, the best hot chocolate shop in Britain. Knoops is up by the Land Gate, creating Heaven to order. Choose your percentage of cocoa, from entry-level 34% all the way through a terrifying 99%, and any extras, from marshmallow and cream to chilli and salt, then swoon as a sublime beverage is ground, swirled and crafted before your very eyes. If you have enough room for lunch after that, Edith’s in the high street is a fine, old fashioned café complete with armchairs, chintz, wind-up gramophone and excellent home-made food.

An old, reformed rogue who still carries a twinkle in his eye, Rye is genteel enough to be a charming slice of Olde Englande, yet naughty enough to retain that slightly dangerous edge. It’s worth lingering to savour the town’s many layers, however they were acquired.

Margate has many claims to fame, not least one JMW Turner, who endlessly painted the curious, ever-changing light. More recently, TS Eliot wrote much of The Waste Land while convalescing in Margate and YBA (Young British Artist) Tracey Emin defiantly nailed her colours to the until-recently unfashionable town’s artistic mast.

Most people, however, associate Margate with traditional British, kiss-me-quick, bucket-and-spade seaside fun. The beach is perfect golden sand within a natural harbour, and the fine Georgian and Victorian architecture tells the story of its heyday as a prosperous holiday destination before the advent of cheap foreign package deals. Starting with the late 18th century sea-bathing craze (the 1791 Royal Sea Bathing Hospital building still exists) the town’s popularity grew with the arrival of the railway.

Image: Paul Lindus

The entrepreneurs were ready. The Barnum of Britain, circus proprietor, lion tamer and showman ‘Lord’ George Sanger, built a garden with grand crenulations, a menagerie full of exotic beasts and The Hall by the Sea for music and dancing pleasure.

In 1919, John Henry Iles wanted to develop it into an American-style amusement park, heralding a new world after the horrors of World War I. Of course, somehow ‘American cool’ never really happened. Like a stick of gaudy seaside rock, Britishness runs right through Dreamland.

Image: Paul Lindus

The first thing Iles built was a mile-long wooden rollercoaster, the likes of which had never been seen before in the UK. When it opened in 1921, 500,000 people sampled its delights in the first three months. Gentle by today’s white-knuckle standards, it was designed to show off Margate rather than terrify holidaymakers. Over the years the scenic railway became first an icon of Margate, then a fist of defiance, slipping to a badge of shame before finally rising as a phoenix of hope.

The 1920s and 30s brought an art deco cinema, along with more rides and a ballroom, and, after a brief hiccup during WWII when it was requisitioned for use as a hospital for wounded Allied soldiers, Dreamland went from strength to strength. Its heyday was the 1950s and 60s when, among many others, Bill Haley, the Rolling Stones, the Drifters and Gerry and the Pacemakers all played there.

Image: Paul Lindus

In the 1970s, however, Margate began to flag. Dreamland suffered facelift after facelift, relaunch after relaunch but nothing could stop the crowds disappearing to the more reliable Mediterranean sun. Slowly the park disintegrated until finally succumbing to the inevitable.

Image: Paul Lindus

From the steep hill leading to Margate’s mysterious Shell Grotto, it’s easy to imagine the body blow sustained at Dreamland’s demise. The sheer size of the dead funfair’s footprint saw a huge tract of land in the very centre of town abandoned by all but the vandals. No wonder a ‘Save Dreamland’ campaign by locals was so passionate.

Image: Paul Lindus

Their first move was canny indeed, petitioning for listed building status for the scenic railway, instantly rendering the land worthless to developers hovering with wrecking balls. The cinema was also listed Grade II*, and historians were intrigued to find rare Victorian flint animal cages from the park’s days as a pleasure ground; delicate, tiny – and significant enough for English Heritage to step in. The campaign was building nicely.

In April 2008, the unthinkable happened. Images of the scenic railway, engulfed in a sea of flames, flickered across TV screens. Arson was suspected and the nation was shocked. Dreamland represented all seaside towns harbouring hopes of regeneration.

Image: Paul Lindus

If the developers thought their moment had come, however, they reckoned against the people of Margate. In a brave leap of faith, Thanet Council bought the even more decrepit park on behalf of the townsfolk and the fundraising began.

Image: Paul Lindus

It was with lip-quivering pride that the mayor of Margate rode fully-restored 1922 gallopers in June 2015, in fur-lined red coat, tricorn and chain of office. The ribbon was cut by descendants of George Sanger and Henry Iles – and 93 year-old George Weston Wright, scenic railway brakeman back in the 1940s. Dreamland was a work in progress, but it was open for business once more and Margate’s lost soul was reborn.

Image: Paul LIndus

From the start it’s been no normal restoration project. Money was tight. Yet financial constraints have bred creativity. In a stroke of genius Dreamland has been reimagined as a renaissance of all British funfairs. Instead of installing new rides, the cash-strapped organisers have collected, collated and lovingly restored historic rides from defunct amusement parks around the country.

Pinball machines, sharp-shooter games and video arcade attractions are twinned with a roller rink, vintage memorabilia and advertisements from the whole of the 20th Century. An amnesty for ‘souvenirs’ liberated when the park was derelict has yielded all manner of original features, returned by red-faced locals who had assumed the funfair had gone forever. Dreamland has become a ‘theme-park’ theme park and a visit takes the reveller on a nostalgic journey from the early 1900s through to modern day.

Image: Paul Lindus

Every decade is represented. The 1930s have a lolloping caterpillar, the 1940s a double-decker merry-go-round. The 1950s see Dan dare-style Hurricane Jet rides and the Cyclone Twist, while spinning teacups from the 1960s have had a Wedgewood blue and white makeover. The eighty-year old Wall of Death, run by the dare-devil Messham family, now in its fourth generation of stunt riders on 1920s Indian Scout bikes, rattles away behind nasal squeaks and thwacks from the authentic Punch and Judy booth.

Image: Paul Lindus

The Chair-o-Plane Waveswinger is straight out of the 1970s. Be warned. It swivels. It tilts. It swings out. It makes you very queasy indeed. The 1980s and 90s have a Ferris wheel, caterpillar coaster, a Born Slippy and pirate boats. New rides are arriving all the time. At time of writing Crazy Mouse, swing boats and a mirror maze were all being tested. What was already a health & safety challenge given the antique rides became much more complex after an unwelcome headline-grabbing accident at a modern amusement park, Alton Towers, days before Dreamland’s reopening.

Image: Paul Lindus

The next phase will see the full restoration of the small, 400-person ballroom, Marine Terrace, but Margate’s thrill seekers will have to wait until phases three and four for ‘Screamland’ and the gigantic, 1200 capacity 1950s ballroom.

The UK’s oldest rollercoaster is also its newest. In a weird twist of fate, not a single nail of the original scenic railway remains; every plank, every rail and every bolt has been replaced with exact replicas, yet it remains a historic listed building. The cars are operated by a traditional brakeman just as they were in 1921. Nothing has been wasted. Every last splinter of the original rollercoaster has been saved, used to build furniture around the funfair. Tiny charred shards have been made into jewellery and souvenirs by local artists and are selling like burnt cakes. Perhaps Dreamland will have its happy ending after all.

Almost destroyed, the Tudor house was hidden under layers of unpromising render. It was only when it was about to be demolished that workmen realised it was a Tudor masterpiece. It has been restored to its former glory and is a must-see.

Image: Paul Lindus

Margate Old Town

A fabulous mix of old buildings and trendy uses, this compact quarter sees beach balls and hula hoops, windmills and shrimp nets jostling for position with cool craft stores, trendy bars and antique shops along the seafront.